


Nostalgia

by VigilantShadow



Series: Amnesty Prompt Fills [7]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast)
Genre: Bodyguard AU, I didn't tag with graphic violence because the actual, M/M, but a minor NPC dies, violence to the body wasn't shown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 19:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18321740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantShadow/pseuds/VigilantShadow
Summary: Years ago, Indrid Cold was Duck Newton's bodyguard. Then one day he disappeared, leaving Duck with an empty bed and no explanation.ORIndrid shows up with a dire warning. Duck has to decide whether he still trusts Indrid with his life.





	Nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anon on Tumblr.
> 
> [You can also read this on my blog.](http://sternspatreon.tumblr.com/post/183628891144/going-with-option-1-i-considered-doing-both-but)

Duck hadn’t intended to get famous. He’d wanted to avoid it, actually. Back when he was six, the rest of his classmates wanted to be astronauts and rock stars and he had just wanted some peace and quiet. While most of them had grown out of their little kid aspirations, he’d slid into adulthood with the exact same life goals as he’d had when he was seven and still going by the name he’d been born with.

But apparently people thought the four hundred page novel about Fowler the Forest Ranger and his best friend June, the one he’d written as a joke while nineteen and high off his ass, was high art. And apparently he hadn’t shut Minerva’s visions out of his head as well as he’d wanted to, because the big money capitalists Fowler and June brought to justice weren’t…fictional.

Accidentally revealing an embezzlement/murder/stock-market-rigging conspiracy made you famous, as it turned out.

Made you famous, and made it so you’d need someone following you around all. The damn. Time.

Well, a normal person would need a bodyguard. Duck wasn’t normal, despite how much he wished he was, but he couldn’t go to his literary agent and say “hey, I’ve got super strength and a sword that talks, I think I’ve got any assassination attempts handled.” So he stayed quiet and pretended it wasn’t annoying as hell to have some dude over his shoulder when he was trying to maintain and educate about Monongahela National Forest.

He also pretended that the most annoying bodyguard – well, former bodyguard – of all hadn’t just accosted him on his way home from work.

“You’re going to die,” Indrid Cold said flatly, stepping into the streetlight like some kind of serial killer. Duck’s current bodyguard shifted, hand falling to the gun at his waist.

“Indrid, you can’t just say shit like that,” Duck said, holding up a hand. His bodyguard frowned – frowned more deeply, he was always frowning – but also relaxed. A little.

Indrid adjusted his glasses, knowing Indrid’s disdain for having to buy new things they were probably the same dinged up ones he’d worn six years ago, and stepped toward them.

“My apologies.” He didn’t sound sorry, but he at least put in the effort to sound like he kind of wanted to sound sorry. “But this is rather urgent.”

“It’s eight pm on a Tuesday, ‘drid.” Duck winced at the nickname. He hadn’t meant to let it slip out, because he had a No Letting On You Have Any Fondness Left For People That Ghost You policy, but it seemed old habits took half a decade to die. He took a deep breath. It didn’t help, so he took another one. That also didn’t help. He gave up keeping cool about all this, and settled for just clenching his jaw instead of turning on his heel and fleeing into his apartment.

You cannot flee from your responsibilities, a voice in his head that sounded exactly like Minerva whispered.

Fuck that, he thought back. Indrid Cold isn’t one of my responsibilities.

“That changes nothing,” Indrid insisted. “You’re going to die. Tonight. In ten minutes, to be exact.”

Duck couldn’t see Indrid’s eyes behind the mirrored red frames, but he could imagine the narrowing of his eyes. Could imagine how, if Duck’s bodyguard weren’t there, he’d probably let himself look worried.

God. Fucking Damnit.

“This one of your bad feelin’s? Or didja take up murder as a side gig?”

Indrid gave up the stony face bullshit and let out a huff of frustration. His casual stride lost all of its casual as he stomped over and stuck a bony finger into Duck’s chest.

“Duck Newton you know very well that when I-“ He turned to Duck’s bodyguard, glasses glinting ominously, “If you pull that gun on me, it will end with a bullet in my leg and another in your neck. That is not a threat, it’s a fact.”

Duck reached up and put a hand over Indrid’s, pushing it back down slowly. Indrid’s hands were still cold. There were still stains of something dark underneath his jagged fingernails.

“Bad feeling, then.”

“Eight minutes, Duck,” Indrid hissed. Indrid hissed. Okay, maybe Duck should take this a little seriously, if Indrid was going to sound like that.

“Okay,” Duck said, eloquently. “Okay. What do we do?”

Duck had been having a decent enough evening. Well, decent might’ve been a strong word for it. It was the same evening he had almost every day, which was how Duck liked his evenings, thank you very much. None of this ominous prophecy bullshit. That was one of the things Duck hadn’t missed.

At least Indrid wasn’t finishing his sentences. Duck’s current bodyguard didn’t do chill, and he was already looking a little perturbed about the whole “promising a gruesome death” thing.

Indrid swallowed, and Duck thought his expression was something approaching relief.

“Good. Good. I’m…glad you asked that.” Indrid glanced over his shoulder. “It wasn’t all that likely you’d ask that, and it’s the only way we make it out of this.”

Duck realized then that he still had his hand over Indrid’s. He couldn’t bring himself to pull away, and the chill of Indrid’s body felt more like home than Duck was comfortable with. Old habits take half a decade to die, which is embarrassing on account he’s the one that got dumped. He should be the one that was over this.

“Yeah, well. Much as this-“ Duck gestured at Indrid with his free hand, “has always been a pain in my ass…” He sighed. “You’re usually right.”

“I’m always right, Duck.”

Duck snorted, stepping away and taking the deep breath he was only just realizing he couldn’t take with Indrid so close.

“No, you’re not. Thinkin’ that way’s always been your damn problem.”

He sounded sadder than he’d meant to. He was going for pissed, because. Well. Duck’d found out Indrid was done with him when he went to sleep one night and woke up to find him gone. It’d taken thirty minutes of wondering whether he’d gone and died or something before Duck’s new bodyguard knocked on his door and informed him Indrid had asked his boss to be taken off the job.

But no, he was sad. And pissed. And pissed he was sad.

“You don’t understand,” Indrid said, like he was explaining his ability to see the future to some child and not somebody who fucking knew how it worked, who he’d told about it while lying in bed together on a warm Summer day, “It was necessary. You have no idea what would have…” Indrid froze, breath catching. “The timeline moved up. Five minutes. We can talk about this later.”

“Sir, are you sure we-“

“I’m not talking to you,” Indrid interrupted, not looking in the bodyguard’s direction. Then, his expression crumbled, and he sounded almost desperate as he said, “Please, Duck.”

Well, shit. He’d already meant to say yes, but now he…

“Yeah,” he said, then took a deep breath, despite the fact he knew it wouldn’t work.

Indrid grabbed his hand properly, dragging him away from his apartment.

“You can’t just-“

“-Drag him away?” Indrid called over his shoulder. “Yes, I can. Right, Duck?”

“It’s fine,” Duck replied. It wasn’t fine, of course. Duck wanted to go home and sleep, or fast forward to the part of the evening where Indrid talked to him about the past instead of the future, but this would have to do.

He could hear his bodyguard trailing after them as Indrid pushed him toward the open door of his car, parked just a few feet off from the street lamp he’d first appeared under. It was the same car that he’d owned six years ago. Jesus, had anything about him changed since then?

Duck tripped a little on the open door of the car, stumbling onto the seat. Then, faster than Duck would’ve thought Indrid could move, he slammed the door shut and darted into the driver’s seat, slamming it too. Duck heard the click of the lock and dove to try and pull it open.

“Child safety lock,” Indrid called back, and Duck barely resisted the urge to swear at him. Then he realized he didn’t have to, on account of-

“What the fuck Indrid?” Duck shouted as his bodyguard yanked at the door handle. He heard Indrid sigh from up front, his I have to do this for the greater good but I’m going to pretend it doesn’t affect me because I’m Indrid Cold and this is my burden to bear sigh. Then Indrid rolled down the window enough to address Duck’s bodyguard.

“I may have been a bit dishonest, Mr. Ryan. There’s no future where I let you into the car and you don’t, well. You know what’s happening in ten seconds, right?”

Then he rolled up the window.

“Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.”

An explosion rocked the car.

“Hm,” Indrid said, eyeing the flames as they died down. “It was early.”

“What the FUCK Indrid?”

“He was planning to take you up to your room and kill you.” Indrid’s voice cracked in a way that probably embarrassed him. “That was the insurance policy, in case you figured him out and tried to run.” Indrid smiled, teeth sharp and glinting, “Don’t worry, it was nothing personal on his part. It was a business transaction.”

“Yeah, thanks, that makes me feel just peachy.”

Duck reached up and trailed his hand down the window, down a spider web of cracks on the outside the window. It hadn’t gotten all the way through, and the glass felt smooth and unbroken beneath his fingers.

“I know it bothers you when people hate you,” Indrid said.

“Yeah, well-“

“-why did I come back then? I don’t hate you, Duck.”

This was a bad time to have this conversation. A bad place. He’d pictured this argument, a few years back, when he still thought about Indrid often enough for it to keep him up at night. It’d always happened in his apartment, when Indrid came home and actually apologized for disappearing. Which might’ve been a little unrealistic because Indrid Cold never-

“I’m sorry.”

Duck wasn’t sure he’d actually heard that, or if he was getting his old fantasies mixed in with real life. Then Indrid unbuckled his seatbelt, turning to sit backward on his seat and stare at Duck around his headrest. He shifted his glasses down his nose, orange eyes locked with Duck’s. Duck raised an eyebrow, and tried to keep his voice even.

“Sorry about what?”

Indrid blinked. Duck thought he might’ve been surprised.

“I…what? Duck, you-“

“I thought we were on the same page, before. But apparently not, since you skipped town. So, what is it you’re sorry about?”

“It was complicated, I had to-“

“You had to?” Duck laughed, it was an ugly noise, and he thought there might’ve been something that sounded like it might turn into crying mixed in.

“Yes, you have no idea what would have happened if-“

“No! I don’t! That’s how it goes when you don’t tell people things.” Duck didn’t like yelling. It reminded him too much of the scuffles that broke out when he used to hang out with the “bad kids” at school. The ones that always led to police sirens, and stern looks from Sheriff Nealy. Here he was, though, his voice echoing around Indrid’s old car and Indrid just staring at him like he hadn’t seen it coming. Duck winced, and managed to rein himself in. “You leavin’ ain’t the kind of shit that gives me visions, Indrid.”

Even if it’d felt like that kind of disaster, at the time.

“This isn’t how this is supposed to go.” Indrid looked away, hands rising to fiddle with his seatbelt. “When we got into the car, every future ended with you forgiving me, or with you leaving.” He tilted his head, streaky black-white hair falling in front of his face. Duck didn’t say one of those things was definitely going to happen. Then he’d have to pick.

“That ain’t an explanation.”

Indrid didn’t say anything, tilting his glasses back up over his eyes. Hiding. Duck resisted the urge to look out his window at his undoubtedly crispy bodyguard.

Duck loved the quiet of the woods. Maybe because it wasn’t real quiet, it was birds and the shifting of trees, and the crunching of his feet down a well-trodden path. This kind of quiet, though? Duck hated it.

“I was going to kill you,” Indrid said, just as Duck was getting the urge to get out and go inside and pretend this was a dream.

He still kind of wanted to do that, except maybe he’d add a bit of screaming into his pillow on at the end.

“You want to say that in a way that makes sense?”

“Each day, I saw a future where you died. Each future, it was because I…failed. I was too slow. I had a vision and it distracted me until after you took a bullet.” There was a hollowness in his voice that had Duck torn between reaching out and shifting as far to the other side of the car as he could.

“So you left.”

“If I left, the future was clear,” Indrid insisted. “Every time I thought about going to Kepler and seeing you, you were there, and perfectly fine without me. It was better-“

“Why didn’t you tell me, then?”

“You wouldn’t have…appreciated my reasoning. We would have fought. You wouldn’t have wanted me to leave, I wouldn’t have been able to convince you it was-“

“That doesn’t matter.” Harsher than Duck had intended, maybe. Not harsher than he wanted to be, but he was too tired to be as harsh as he wanted to be. “You think dropping me convinced me it was better?”

“It was easier for both of-“ He cut himself off and said, with Duck, “It was easier for you, Indrid.” Indrid let his forehead fall against the headrest and laughed, shoulders spasming with it. “Maybe so.”

Duck sagged back against his seat. He was too tired to be as harsh as he wanted to be. He was too tired to want to be as harsh as he wanted to be.

“Why’re you here, Indrid?”

Indrid shook his head, voice muffled from the headrest.

“I thought about coming here, and in half the futures I stopped for gas. I got here, and I was the one who found you after…” He gestured out the window. Another laugh. “Leaving didn’t do anything, did it?”

“I’ve almost died plenty of times, Indrid,” Duck said, slowly. “If it’s all the same, I’d’ve rather died with you, at least back then.”

“Now?”

Duck ground his teeth, thinking.

“Don’t know,” he said, finally, deciding as he said it.

“Would you like to find out?” Indrid asked. “If…you’d have me back.”

Duck didn’t smile. He’d figure out whether he wanted to smile at Indrid later, once they were inside and he could collapse into bed and figure out whether he’d invite Indrid to lay next to him. But he reached out for Indrid’s hand and Indrid took it, nails digging in as he held on for dear life.

He’d figure it out. They’d figure it out.

After all, Duck did need a new bodyguard.


End file.
